Skip to main content

Home/ Groups/ Neuropsychology
Rss Feed
Sort By: Most Recent | Popular Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Tero Toivanen

Growing evidence of the brain's plasticity could benefit stroke victims or those suffer... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...neuroscience-stroke-depression

brain plasticity

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • With the right training, scientists now know the brain can reshape itself to work around dead and damaged areas, often with dramatic benefits.
  • Therapies that exploit the brain's power to adapt have helped people overcome damage caused by strokes, depression, anxiety and learning disabilities, and may one day replace drugs for some of these conditions.
  • Children with language difficulties have been shown to make significant progress using computer training tools that are the equivalent of cerebral cross-training.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Neuroplasticity does not see the different regions of the brain as completely versatile and certainly not interchangeable. But it recognises that if part of the brain is damaged, it can be possible to train other areas to take on, at least to some extent, the job of the lost brain matter.
  • Doidge says he is not anti-medication, but wonders if therapies that tap into neuro-plasticity will soon replace drug treatments for certain conditions. "We can change our brains by sensing, imagining and acting in the world. It's economical and mostly low-tech, and I'm very, very hopeful"
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    With the right training, scientists now know the brain can reshape itself to work around dead and damaged areas, often with dramatic benefits.
Tero Toivanen

Investing in the Developing Brain : The Frontal Cortex - 0 views

scienceblogs.com/...sting_in_the_developing_br.php

brain developing brain neuroscience research

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • But there has been one major payoff from our investigations of the brain: an increasing emphasis on educating young children, before they reach kindergarten. Decades of research have demonstrated that the cortex is astonishingly plastic at a young age and that many important traits and habits seem to solidify before the age of 4.
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    But there has been one major payoff from our investigations of the brain: an increasing emphasis on educating young children, before they reach kindergarten. Decades of research have demonstrated that the cortex is astonishingly plastic at a young age and that many important traits and habits seem to solidify before the age of 4.
Tero Toivanen

Cognitive Daily: A quick eye-exercise can improve your performance on memory tests (but... - 0 views

scienceblogs.com/...ick_eye-exercise_can_impro.php

memory memorization eye movement

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • If you're taking a test of rote memorization, like words from a list, move your eyes from side to side for about 30 seconds before you start.
  • It may be that this quick activity helps facilitate interaction between the brain hemispheres.
  • any activity that encourages communication between the hemispheres is likely to increase recall.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • people who have poorer interactions between the hemispheres should benefit more than others. Who has less interactions between hemispheres? People who are strongly right-handed.
  • Strongly right-handed students remembered significantly more words if they moved their eyes compared to keeping their eyes still. Non-strongly-right-handed students (including left-handers) remembered the same number of words regardless of whether they moved their eyes before the test.
  • strongly right-handed students had significantly fewer false alarms after they moved their eyes back and forth. But for non-strongly-right-handed people, the reverse occurred; moving their eyes caused them to falsely remember more words. So overall, while the eye-saccade exercise helped right-handers, for lefties and for those who didn't have a strongly dominant hand, the exercise actually harmed their performance.
  • You might think that only side-to-side movement would improve performance, but Lyle's team found that moving your eyes up and down caused the same effect.
  • researchers say that other studies have shown that any eye movements increase bilateral activity in the frontal eye field, so it's still possible that hemispheric connectivity can explain the improved performance after eye movements.
  • So why doesn't the exercise work the same way for left-handers? Left handers (and ambidextrous individuals) already have a high level of hemispheric connectivity. Lyle's team speculates that there might be such a thing as too much connectivity, which results in a decrease in performance.
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    Several studies have confirmed this bizarre proposition: If you're taking a test of rote memorization, like words from a list, move your eyes from side to side for about 30 seconds before you start.
Tero Toivanen

Innovation: Mind-reading headsets will change your brain - tech - 23 April 2009 - New S... - 0 views

www.newscientist.com/...ts-will-change-your-brain.html

mind-reading headset brain innovation

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • This week, engineer Adam Wilson made global headlines by updating Twitter using his brainwaves. "USING EEG TO SEND TWEET" he explained.
  • Compatible with any PC running Windows, it will ship later this year for $299 (see image). They have shown off a game where the player moves stones to rebuild Stonehenge using mind power alone (see video).
  • Escaping the lab Researchers have developed systems that read brainwaves – in the form of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals – in order to help people suffering from disabilities or paralysis control wheelchairs, play games , or type on a computer. Now, two companies are preparing to market similar devices to mainstream consumers.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Californian company NeuroSky has also built a device that can detect emotions: the firm says it can tell whether you are focused, relaxed, afraid or anxious, for example.
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    This week, engineer Adam Wilson made global headlines by updating Twitter using his brainwaves. "USING EEG TO SEND TWEET" he explained.
Tero Toivanen

Eide Neurolearning Blog: Why Boys Need Alternatives with Reading and Writing - 0 views

eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com/...alternatives-with-reading.html

neurolearning Reading and Writing brain

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • If you give girls and boys language tasks, most girls will process the information in the same way (in a specialized language area)
  • help them with word storage and retrieval
  • But for boys, sensitivity to the modality of how words are presented means that an extra steps need to be taken to match words that are picked up by listening and words that are read on the printed page. No wonder dyslexia is much more common in boys - the separate system means that the sight and sound of words are learned as distinct processes.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • As a result, verbal competence may be strong in one domain (oral speech for instance), but be weak in another (reading).
  • because boys require two areas and a matching of visual-auditory inputs, impairment in one system may cause the whole language coordination process to fail.
  • The visual-auditory gap may also be why some boys may need to read word-for-word outloud or to themselves (i.e. not silently read) in order to fully comprehend or remember the story.
  • Some careful consideration needs to made of instructional implications for boys given some of these new discoveries. Learning by listening and learning by reading are not synonymous; route-congruent factors(listening - oral presentation, reading - written response) may need to be considered when a learning gap or frank underachievement is seen, and an insistence on the availability of auditory-visual supports (reading along with books-on-tape, detailed handouts for lecture courses) should be a requirement of every classroom.
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    Boys require two areas and a matching of visual-auditory inputs, impairment in one system may cause the whole language coordination process to fail.
Tero Toivanen

Brain scan replaces job interview in 5 years - 0 views

www.nextnature.net/?p=3198

brain scan replaces job interview

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    Brain scan replaces job interview in 5 years
Tero Toivanen

First Evidence That Musical Training Affects Brain Development In Young Children - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...060920093024.htm

music brain development young children brain development memory IQ Suzuki method MEG

shared by Tero Toivanen on 21 Jun 09 - Cached
  • The findings, published today (20 September 2006) in the online edition of the journal Brain [1], show that not only do the brains of musically-trained children respond to music in a different way to those of the untrained children, but also that the training improves their memory as well. After one year the musically trained children performed better in a memory test that is correlated with general intelligence skills such as literacy, verbal memory, visiospatial processing, mathematics and IQ.
  • Researchers have found the first evidence that young children who take music lessons show different brain development and improved memory over the course of a year compared to children who do not receive musical training.
  • While previous studies have shown that older children given music lessons had greater improvements in IQ scores than children given drama lessons, this is the first study to identify these effects in brain-based measurements in young children.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The researchers chose children being trained by the Suzuki method for several reasons: it ensured the children were all trained in the same way, were not selected for training according to their initial musical talent and had similar support from their families. In addition, because there was no early training in reading music, the Suzuki method provided the researchers with a good model of how training in auditory, sensory and motor activities induces changes in the cortex of the brain.
  • Analysis of the MEG responses showed that across all children, larger responses were seen to the violin tones than to the white noise, indicating that more cortical resources were put to processing meaningful sounds. In addition, the time that it took for the brain to respond to the sounds (the latency of certain MEG components) decreased over the year. This means that as children matured, the electrical conduction between neurons in their brains worked faster.
  • Of most interest, the Suzuki children showed a greater change over the year in response to violin tones in an MEG component (N250m) related to attention and sound discrimination than did the children not taking music lessons.
  • Analysis of the music tasks showed greater improvement over the year in melody, harmony and rhythm processing in the children studying music compared to those not studying music. General memory capacity also improved more in the children studying music than in those not studying music.
  • The finding of very rapid maturation of the N250m component to violin sounds in children taking music lessons fits with their large improvement on the memory test. It suggests that musical training is having an effect on how the brain gets wired for general cognitive functioning related to memory and attention.
  • It is clear that music is good for children's cognitive development and that music should be part of the pre-school and primary school curriculum.
  • Tero Toivanen on 21 Jun 09
     
    Researchers have found the first evidence that young children who take music lessons show different brain development and improved memory over the course of a year compared to children who do not receive musical training.
Tero Toivanen

» Brain Plasticity: How learning changes your brain   « Brain Fitness Revolut... - 0 views

www.sharpbrains.com/...ow-learning-changes-your-brain

brain neuroplasticity learning

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • A surprising consequence of neuroplasticity is that the brain activity associated with a given function can move to a different location as a consequence of normal experience, brain damage or recovery.
  • The brain compensates for damage by reorganizing and forming new connections between intact neurons. In order to reconnect, the neurons need to be stimulated through activity.
  • Research has shown that in fact the brain never stops changing through learning. Plasticity IS the capacity of the brain to change with learning. Changes associated with learning occur mostly at the level of the connections between neurons. New connections can form and the internal structure of the existing synapses can change.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • It looks like learning a second language is possible through functional changes in the brain: the left inferior parietal cortex is larger in bilingual brains than in monolingual brains.
  • For instance, London taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus (in the posterior region) than London bus drivers (Maguire, Woollett, & Spiers, 2006)…. Why is that? It is because this region of the hippocampus is specialized in acquiring and using complex spatial information in order to navigate efficiently. Taxi drivers have to navigate around London whereas bus drivers follow a limited set of routes.
  • Did you know that when you become an expert in a specific domain, the areas in your brain that deal with this type of skill will grow?
  • Plastic changes also occur in musicians brains compared to non-musicians.
  • They found that gray matter (cortex) volume was highest in professional musicians, intermediate in amateur musicians, and lowest in non-musicians in several brain areas involved in playing music: motor regions, anterior superior parietal areas and inferior temporal areas.
  • Medical students’ brains showed learning-induced changes in regions of the parietal cortex as well as in the posterior hippocampus. These regions of the brains are known to be involved in memory retrieval and learning.
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    A surprising consequence of neuroplasticity is that the brain activity associated with a given function can move to a different location as a consequence of normal experience, brain damage or recovery.
Tero Toivanen

Exercise | Brain Rules | - 0 views

www.brainrules.net/exercise

exercise brain brainrules

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    How to exercise the brain.
Tero Toivanen

Brain Foundation - Healthy Brain - 0 views

www.brainaustralia.org.au/healthy_brain

brain healthy program Brain Foundation healthy brain excercise nourish psyical activity safety stress depression relax sleep regular checks smoking drugs

shared by Tero Toivanen on 22 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Tero Toivanen on 22 Jun 09
     
    The Healthy Brain Program, an initiative of the Brain Foundation, aims to assist Australians to keep their brains healthy into old age, through the provision of community education and research. The program aims to address issues such as: People are living longer, and the prevalence of degenerative brain disorders is increasing. There is little information available about how to keep the brain healthy compared to the wealth of information about a healthy body and heart. There is a need for a coordinated approach to education on key indicators and risk reduction strategies.
Tero Toivanen

Jeff Hawkins on how brain science will change computing | Video on TED.com - 0 views

www.ted.com/...nce_will_change_computing.html

brain science theory computing TED memory

shared by Tero Toivanen on 24 May 09 - Cached
  • Tero Toivanen on 24 May 09
     
    Treo creator Jeff Hawkins urges us to take a new look at the brain -- to see it not as a fast processor, but as a memory system that stores and plays back experiences to help us predict, intelligently, what will happen next.
Tero Toivanen

Wired 14.02: Buddha on the Brain - 0 views

www.wired.com/...dalai.html

brain meditation Dalai Lama Buddha buddhism Tibet neuroscience

shared by Tero Toivanen on 28 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Davidson's research created a stir among brain scientists when his results suggested that, in the course of meditating for tens of thousands of hours, the monks had actually altered the structure and function of their brains.
  • Lutz asked Ricard to meditate on "unconditional loving-kindness and compassion." He immediately noticed powerful gamma activity - brain waves oscillating at roughly 40 cycles per second -�indicating intensely focused thought. Gamma waves are usually weak and difficult to see. Those emanating from Ricard were easily visible, even in the raw EEG output. Moreover, oscillations from various parts of the cortex were synchronized - a phenomenon that sometimes occurs in patients under anesthesia.
  • In the traditional view, the brain becomes frozen with the onset of adulthood, after which few new connections form. In the past 20 years, though, scientists have discovered that intensive training can make a difference. For instance, the portion of the brain that corresponds to a string musician's fingering hand grows larger than the part that governs the bow hand - even in musicians who start playing as adults. Davidson's work suggested this potential might extend to emotional centers
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The researchers had never seen anything like it. Worried that something might be wrong with their equipment or methods, they brought in more monks, as well as a control group of college students inexperienced in meditation. The monks produced gamma waves that were 30 times as strong as the students'. In addition, larger areas of the meditators' brains were active, particularly in the left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for positive emotions.
  • But Davidson saw something more. The monks had responded to the request to meditate on compassion by generating remarkable brain waves. Perhaps these signals indicated that the meditators had attained an intensely compassionate state of mind. If so, then maybe compassion could be exercised like a muscle; with the right training, people could bulk up their empathy. And if meditation could enhance the brain's ability to produce "attention and affective processes" - emotions, in the technical language of Davidson's study - it might also be used to modify maladaptive emotional responses like depression.
  • Davidson and his team published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in November 2004. The research made The Wall Street Journal, and Davidson instantly became a celebrity scientist.
  • Tero Toivanen on 28 Jun 09
     
    Davidson's research created a stir among brain scientists when his results suggested that, in the course of meditating for tens of thousands of hours, the monks had actually altered the structure and function of their brains
Tero Toivanen

Memory Improved 20% by Nature Walk « PsyBlog - 0 views

www.spring.org.uk/...improved-20-by-nature-walk.php

psyblog Memory Improved Nature Walk

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • Marc G. Berman and colleagues at the University of Michigan wanted to test the effect of a walk’s scenery on cognitive function (Berman, Jonides & Kaplan, 2008; PDF).
  • In the first of two studies participants were given a 35 minute task involving repeating loads of random numbers back to the experimenter, but in reverse order.
  • The results showed that people’s performance on the test improved by almost 20% after wandering amongst the trees. By comparison those subjected to a busy street did not reliably improve on the test.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • These results replicated a previous study by Berto (2005) who found that just viewing pictures of natural scenes had a restorative effect on cognitive function.
  • In the second study participants weren’t even allowed to leave the lab but instead some stared at pictures of natural scenes while others looked at urban environments. The improvements weren’t quite as impressive as the first study, but, once again, the trees and fields beat the roads and lampposts.
  • So just as we might have predicted nature is a kind of natural cognitive enhancer, helping our brain let off steam so it can cruise back up to full functioning.
  • When our minds need refreshing and if natural scenery is accessible, we should take the opportunity. If not then just looking at pictures of nature is a reasonable second best.
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    New study finds that short-term memory is improved 20% by walking in nature, or even just by looking at an image of a natural scene.
Tero Toivanen

Interactive Movie - How the human brain works - New Scientist - 0 views

www.newscientist.com/...brain-interactive

brain lobes cortex Basal ganglia Thalamus Hippocampus Cerebellum Brain stem Amygdala interactive image scientist

shared by Tero Toivanen on 05 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Tero Toivanen on 05 Jul 09
     
    Interactive image of brain and it's functions.
Tero Toivanen

Developing Intelligence : Novelty Detection: Domain General and Domain Specific Mechanisms - 0 views

scienceblogs.com/...novelty.php

dopamine temporal_differences neuroscience

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    An astonishing recent discovery in computational neuroscience is the relationship between dopamine and the "temporal differences" reinforcement learning algorithm
Tero Toivanen

Developing Intelligence : When Pigs Fly But Hell Hasn't Frozen Over: Semantic Anomalies... - 0 views

scienceblogs.com/..._pigs_fly_but_hell_hasnt_f.php

cognitive_neuroscience Broca's_aphasia

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    Semantic Anomalies, Context, and the Inferior Frontal Gyri
Tero Toivanen

Neurophilosophy : The neurological basis of intuition - 0 views

scienceblogs.com/...logical_basis_of_intuition.php

explicit memory implicit memory intuition

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    According to a new study, our gut feelings can enhance the retrieval of explicitly encoded memories. Eksplisiittisen ja implisiittisen muistitiedon käsittely aivoissa.
Tero Toivanen

Facts and Myths About the Brain and Learning « Learning Landscape - 0 views

akomlandscape.org/...s-about-the-brain-and-learning

teaching brain learning education mind

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    Facts and Myths About the Brain and Learning
Tero Toivanen

Neurophilosophy : Reading the contents of working memory - 0 views

scienceblogs.com/...contents_of_working_memory.php

neurophilosophy

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    Oleltuksia siitä, miten työmuisti toimii aivoissa.
Tero Toivanen

» Working Memory Training can Influence Brain Biochemistry   « Brain Fitness ... - 0 views

www.sharpbrains.com/...n-influence-brain-biochemistry

sharpbrains working memory brain biochemistry training

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • The major finding was that increased working memory capacity following training was associated with changes in brain biochemistry. Specifically, the researchers found changes in the density and binding potential of cortical D1 dopamine receptors in brain regions that are activated during working memory tasks.
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    The major finding was that increased working memory capacity following training was associated with changes in brain biochemistry. Specifically, the researchers found changes in the density and binding potential of cortical D1 dopamine receptors in brain regions that are activated during working memory tasks.
« First ‹ Previous 101 - 120 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page